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 5J5 
 
 FROM PUGET SOUND TO THE UPPER COLUMBIA, 
 
 Seen from the ^vaitiz. of the hotel in the 
 new city of Tacoma, the enormous double- 
 crowned peak of Mount Tacoma dominates 
 the whole landscape. The range of the Cas- 
 cade Mountains, above which it rears its vast 
 snow-fields and its eight great glaciers, looks 
 like a low, green wall by comparison, though 
 its most insignificant summits are higher than 
 the loftiest mountains of the Atlantic States. 
 And wherever you may find yourself on 
 Puget Sound or its shores, be it in the cherry 
 groves of Olympia, or on the lonely waters of 
 Hood's Canal, or on the populous hill-side 
 of Seatde, or by forest-rimmed Lake Wash- 
 ington, or on Port Townsend's high plateau, 
 there is the superb mountain — if the atmos- 
 phere be clear, seemingly close at hand, clean- 
 cut, and luminous ; in other conditions of the 
 air, looking " far, faint, and dim," but never 
 much nearer or more remote, no matter from 
 what point of view it is seen. It is by far the 
 most impressive and the most beautiful of 
 American snow-peaks, with the possible ex- 
 ;;eption of Mount St. Elias in Alaska, with 
 which I cannot claim acquaintance. Its gla- 
 ciers feed five swift rivers : the Cowlitz, flow- 
 ing to the Columbia ; the Chehalis, which 
 empties into the Pacific ; and the Nisqually, 
 Puyallup, and White, which send their milky 
 waters to Puget Sound. I should, perhaps, 
 here explain that Mount Tacoma is the 
 Mount Rainier of the old maps, to which 
 tourists and the dwellers in»the Sound coun- 
 try, except those who live in Seattle, are en- 
 deavoring to restore its musical Indian name, 
 meaning " the nourishing breast." Its alti- 
 tude is 14,440 feet, nearly 3000 more than 
 that of the sharp pyramid of Mount Hooci, the 
 sentinel of the Willamette Valley and the 
 Lower Columbia, and the special pride of 
 the people of PorUand. Its glaciers have 
 lately been made accessible by the cutting of 
 trails through the forest at its base. When 
 you survey them through a glass, comfort- 
 ably seated in an easy-chair on the hotel 
 pia/za, a trip thither seems no (Hfficult under- 
 taking. Apparently you have them right un- 
 der your hand, and can study the topography 
 of their glittering surfaces ; and you are as- 
 tonished when the guide tells you that to go 
 to the foot of one of the glaciers and re- 
 turn takes five days, and that if you get upon 
 the ridge overlooking the chief glacier, you 
 must add two days to tiie journey. He fur- 
 ther explains that the little brown streak on 
 
 the left of this glacier is a sheer precipice of 
 rock over one thousand feet high, and that 
 the small cracks in the ice-fields are enormous 
 crevasses, over the sides of which you can 
 peer down into dizzy depths and see raging 
 torrents cutting their way through green walls 
 of ice. A visit t "> these glaciers is not, how- 
 ever, a formidable undertaking to persons who 
 do not mind a few days in the saddle, a litde 
 rough camp life, and a fatiguing climb over 
 snow-fields. Tourists go in parties of five or 
 six, provided with horses and camp equipage, 
 and with spiked shoes, iron-pointed staves, 
 and ropes, quite in the Alpine fashion. . 
 
 The fascinating mountain was not the goal 
 of the journey to be described in this article. 
 My plan was to traverse the wilderness at its 
 foot, cross the Cascade Range by a pass some 
 thirty miles north of it, strike the head-waters 
 of the Yakima River and follow that stream 
 down to its junction with the Columbia, and 
 finally to reach a railroad at Ainsworth, at 
 the confluence of the Snake and Columbia. 
 The distance to be traversed was about two 
 hundred ai.d fifty miles, mainly through an 
 uninhabited country. Before setting out, let 
 us take another glance from our outlook on 
 the high plateau in the town. Here, at our 
 feet, is a broad arm of the Sound, called 
 Commencement Bay. Just beyond are mead- 
 ows, on the eastern forest rim of which stands 
 the friendly group of buildings of the Puyal- 
 lup Indian Agency. All the rest of the land- 
 scape seems an unbroken forest. We can look 
 over it for sixty miles to the crest of the 
 mountains and the notch which indicates the 
 pass where we are to cross. This wilderness 
 appearance is deceptive though, for hidden 
 behind the trees are one hundred and sixty 
 Indian farms, and beyond the reservation 
 containing them lie three little strips of mar- 
 velously fertile valleys, those of the Puyal- 
 lup, Stuck, and White rivers, which together 
 form the most productive hop region for its 
 size in the world. Uj) the Puyallup Valley for 
 thirty miles runs a railroad which brings coal 
 down from mines near the slopes of Mount 
 Tacoma — a brown, crumbling, dirty-looking 
 coal, but so rich in carbon that it is sent by 
 the ship-load to San Francisco for steam-fuel. 
 
 Our first halt on the journey eastward into 
 the wilderness is at the agency on the reser- 
 vation. The Puyallups are good Indians, but 
 not in the Western sense of l)eing dead Indians. 
 The inhabitants of the ambitious town of 
 
 Tacomr 
 
 would I 
 
 soniewli 
 
 tolemhl 
 
 inoval 
 
 receivec 
 
 farms, i- 
 
 dred an( 
 
 tile who 
 
 that any 
 
 I lenient 
 
 are self-s. 
 
 ago exp 
 
 llieni is 
 
 Vol.. 
 

 FROM PUGET SOUND TO THE UPPER COLUMBIA. 
 
 ^ZZ 
 
 m 
 
 •ecipice of 
 , and that 
 ; enormous 
 1 you can 
 see raging 
 green walls 
 not, how- 
 ersons who 
 die, a little 
 climb over 
 s of five or 
 p equipage, 
 ted staves, 
 lion. . 
 
 lot the goal 
 this article, 
 jrness at its 
 I pass some 
 head-waters 
 that stream 
 lumbia, and 
 insworth, at 
 [ Columbia. 
 5 about two 
 through an 
 ^ing out, let 
 outlook on 
 ^ere, at our 
 )und, called 
 id are mead- 
 vhich stands 
 f the Puyal- 
 of the land- 
 We can look 
 crest of the 
 indicates the 
 is wilderness 
 I, for hidden 
 ;d and sixty 
 reservation 
 trijjs of mar- 
 the Puyal- 
 lich together 
 ■cgion for its 
 ip Valley for 
 brings coal 
 OS of Mount 
 lirty-looking 
 it is sent bv 
 )r steam-fuel, 
 astward into 
 i)n the reser- 
 Indians, but 
 lead Indians. 
 )us town of 
 
 Tacoma, which overlooks their little domain, 
 would like to have them die olV, or at least go 
 somewliore else; l)ut tliey arc well -behaved and 
 toieral)ly industrious, and no plea for tlieir re- 
 moval can 1)0 made. Besides, tliey have lately 
 received patents from tlie (loveninient to tlieir 
 farms, ea( li iiead of a family getting one hun- 
 dre<l and sixty acres, and these patents cover 
 the whole are.'; )f the reservation ; so the ho|)e 
 that any part of it will be o|)ene(l to white set- 
 tlement has been abandoned. These Indians 
 are self-supporting, their annuities havinji long 
 ago expired. All the Ciovernment does for 
 them is to pay the cost of the schools, wliere 
 Vol,. .\.\I.\.-S5. 
 
 MOINT TACOMA, FROM LAKE WASIllNGTON. 
 
 about one hundred and fifty of their children 
 are educated and at the same time boarded 
 and clad. Farmers in a small way, clearing 
 ittle jiatches of ground on whi(-h they raise 
 wheat and oats, and cutting hay on the natu- 
 ral meadows near the tide-flats, the Puyallups 
 make shift to live in a simple fashion, being 
 helped out in the ])roblem of existence by the 
 fish and dams of the neighboring Sound, and 
 by wages earned every year in the hop-fields 
 up tiie valley during the picking .season. 
 They own horses and cattle, and build for 
 themselves comtbrtable little houses, 'i'hey are 
 a home-staying folk, the dense forests around 
 them oflering no inducements tor roaming, 
 and their only excursions being short trips 
 on the Sound in their graceful, high-prowed 
 pirogues. On the whole, I think they are the 
 most creditable specimens of civili/e(l Indians 
 to be found in the I'"ar West. They govern 
 
 .•<7f)70 
 
 
834 
 
 FROM PUGET SOUND TO THE UPPER COLUMBIA. 
 
 themselves in most matters, through officials 
 of their own choosing, the agent keeping a 
 close supervision over them, but rarely being 
 called upon to exercise the arbitrary power 
 which he, like all Indian agents, legally pos- 
 sesses. A board of Indian magistrates pun- 
 ishes criminals and decides civil actions, and a 
 few Indian police under the command of the 
 schoolmaster at the agency keep order on the 
 reservation. If whisky could be kept out, the 
 police might be dispensed with, for the Indians 
 when sober are never quarrelsome, and their 
 honesty is superior to that of the average 
 white man. The agent holds a theory that the 
 inordinate craving of the Indian for whisky is 
 an effect of the change from savage to civil- 
 ized diet and modes of living, and that it will 
 disappear in time, when the race gets wonted 
 to its new conditions. In the schools I heard 
 the Indian children read in the " fourth 
 reader " about as well, save for a curious ac- 
 cent, as children of the same ages in the dis- 
 trict schools of the States. They wrote a fair 
 hand, too, and sang Moody and Sankey hymns. 
 Arithmetic, the teacher said, is t^eir hardest 
 task. The dormitories and dining-room were 
 very neat, and the whole place was cheery and 
 home-like. The more capable pupils, when 
 they Uixive at the age of fifteen or sixteen, are 
 sent to the industrial school at Forest Grove, 
 Oregon, where they are taught trades. The 
 others return to their homes after receiving an 
 ordinary common-school education. 
 
 The agent, who is the son of one of the 
 first missionaries among the Oregon Indians, 
 and has himself been many years in the work 
 of civilizing the tribes of Puget Sound, drove 
 us about among the Indian farms all one 
 afternoon. The houses were as comfortable as 
 those of white settlers in new regions, and the 
 crops appeared well cared for. The men were 
 at work m the hop-fields. In their blue shirts 
 and h'ckory trousers they had nothing of the 
 look of the savage al)out them, save their long 
 hair. That is the la-st distinguishnig badge of 
 the wild state that the 1 ndian gives up ; he clings 
 to his long locks as persistently as a Chinaman 
 to his queue. The agent addressed all whom we 
 met in Chinook, iiKjuiring after their fiimilies 
 and their crops, and answering ([uestions about 
 the children in the ager..^ school. Chinook, 
 the curious jargon invented by the Hudson's 
 Bay Company's agents about a hundred years 
 ago, is the language of business and social 
 intercourse among all the tribes of the North 
 Pacific coast. It is to this region what French 
 is to Europe. With a knowledge of its three 
 hundred words, an Indian or a white trader or 
 missionary (an travel among the numerous 
 tribes west of the Rocky Mountains and make 
 himself understood. There are no moods or 
 
 tenses to the verbs, no cases to the nouns, no 
 comparison of the adjectives, and only one prep- 
 osition. Gestures and emphasis must be relied 
 upon to help out the meager vocabulary, which 
 is a droll mixture of Indian, English, and French 
 words. I heard an amusing story on the eastern 
 side of the Cascade Mountains of a Bos..on gen- 
 tleman who undertook to translate Chiaook by 
 its sound. He was visiting the Yakima Reser- 
 vation, and for some reason the Indians did 
 not like him, and were in the habit of calling 
 him " hyas cultus Boston man." The visitor 
 remarked to his friends that even the savages 
 recognized the superiority of Boston culture, 
 for they always spoke of him as a highly cul- 
 tured Boston man. It was not until the joke had 
 been a long time enjoyed that he was told that 
 " hyas " meant very, and " cultus "bad or worth- 
 less, and that " Boston man " was the Chinook 
 term for all Americans, — Englishmen and Can- 
 adians being called " King George men." 
 
 Beyond the Indian farms in the Puyallup 
 Valley lie the hop-fields, reaching up the river 
 towards Mount Tacoma for ten miles, and 
 also along the Stuck River, a slough connect- 
 ing the Puyallup with the White, and for 
 perhaps a dozen miles on the banks of the 
 latter stream. Only the maple and alder bot- 
 toms near the streams make good hop land, 
 and they are so productive that wild land, 
 which costs eighty dollars an acre to clear, 
 sells for from fifty to one hundred dollars an 
 acre. Hop land in good condition, with 
 poles and growing vines, but without build- 
 ings, is worth three hundred dollars an acre. 
 Whoever possesses a twenty-acre field, with a 
 drying-house, is comfortably well off". An 
 average yield is fifteen hundred pounds to the 
 acre ; a large one, twenty-five hundred pounds. 
 A veteran hop-raiser who has been thirteen 
 years in the business told me that it costs two 
 hundred dollars an acre to make and market a 
 crop. Including picking, drying, and binding, 
 he figured the cost at ten cents per pound, 
 of which the picking alone is six. The in- 
 dustry is a fascinating one, having a good 
 deal of the character of a lottery, the jjrice of 
 hops having run uj) and down during the 
 past few years over the wide range of from 
 ten cents to one dollar. My informant ex- 
 jK'cted to get thirty-five cents this year. His 
 forty acres would yield him eighty thousand 
 pounds, he thought, which would bring hiin 
 twenty-eight thousand dollars. The cost to 
 him at ten cents jjcr pound would be eight 
 thousand dollars, leaving a profit of twenty 
 lhousan<l dollars. There are not many ways of 
 getting so large an amount of money out of 
 forty acres of ground. The thorough cultiva- 
 tion of these little valleys reminds one of the 
 vineyard countries of Europe, but the resem- 
 
FROM PUGET SOUND TO THE UPPER COLUMBIA. 
 
 835 
 
 : nouns, no 
 lyoneprep- 
 ist be relied 
 ilary, which 
 and French 
 I the eastern 
 Bos-.on gen- 
 Chinook by 
 cima Reser- 
 [ndinns did 
 it of calling 
 The visitor 
 the savages 
 ton culture, 
 L highly cul- 
 the joke had 
 vas told that 
 ladorworth- 
 the Chinook 
 lenandCan- 
 Tc men." 
 ;he Puyallup 
 up the river 
 I miles, and 
 jgh connect- 
 ite, and for 
 janks of the 
 id alder bot- 
 )d hop land, 
 It wild land, 
 ere to clear, 
 ;d dollars an 
 idition, with 
 ithout build- 
 liars an acre. 
 : field, with a 
 ell off. An 
 )ounds to the 
 dred pounds, 
 jeen thirteen 
 It it costs two 
 and market a 
 and binding, 
 s per pound, 
 six. The in- 
 ving a good 
 , the ijrice of 
 n during the 
 ingc of from 
 nformant ex- 
 lis year. His 
 ;lUy thousand 
 il bring him 
 The cost to 
 juld be eight 
 )fit of twenty 
 many ways of 
 money out of 
 •ough cultiva- 
 uls one of the 
 )Ut the resem- 
 
 blance vanishes as soon as the eye falls on the 
 forest walls that encompass them on all sides. 
 
 In the hop-picking season there occurs a 
 remarkable pilgrimage from the Indian tribes 
 of Washington Territory and British Colum- 
 bia. The Indians come in their pirogues from 
 Puget Sound, from Frazer River, from Van- 
 couver's Island, and even from the shores of 
 the Pacific. Others cross the mountain trails 
 on ponies from the valleys of the Yakima and 
 the Upper Columbia and from the distant 
 forests of the Coeur d'Alfenes. To the number 
 of five thousand, they gather every year in 
 the hop region to furnish labor for picking. 
 Of course, for the most part, the workers 
 are women and children, the men spending 
 much of their time in gambling, smoking, and 
 lounging. This great influx of savagery pro- 
 duces no alarm among the white settlers ; in- 
 deed, they would be helpless to gather their 
 crop without the abundant supply of red 
 labor. By the Indians the hop-picking season 
 is looked forward to all the year with pleas- 
 ant anticipation as the one great break in the 
 monotony of their lives — a time of travel, 
 excitement, sociability, love-making, and mar- 
 rying, as well as of earning money to buy blan- 
 kets, clothing, trinkets, and sugar. They give 
 the white people ver)' little trouble, being neither 
 rowdyish nor thievish. The farmers sleep with 
 their doors unlocked while the neighboring 
 woods are alive with Indian camps. 
 
 Well mounted and equipped for camp life 
 in the wilderness, we left the valley of the 
 Puyallup near the South Prairie coal-mine, 
 and, scrambling up a steep bluff, struck into 
 the dense forest on a trail that meandered 
 about to avoid fallen tree trunks. The timber 
 growth was composed of enormous firs and 
 cedars, having trunks eight or ten feet in 
 diameter at their base, and sending their 
 straight columns up into the air to a height 
 of fully two hundred and fifty feet. The pro- 
 cesses of life and death were going on side by 
 side in this forest, uprooted trees that had 
 lived out their time cumbering the ground 
 and filling the air with the peculiar odor of 
 decaying wood. In places the dead trunks 
 would lie across each other in confused 
 masses. Sometimes the trail would go beneath 
 a gigantic trunk caught in the arms of two 
 standing e^ 01 wouLl make a detour to go 
 around the cliff like wail formed I)y the up- 
 lorn roots of one of these dead monarchs of 
 the woods. A dense underbrush of alders and 
 young cedars made it im|)ossibie to see a 
 do/en yards from the trail ; and to add to the 
 jungle-like appearaiue of ihe forest, the ground 
 was covered witii a growlii of gigantic ferns, 
 usually taller than a man's head, and often 
 high enough to conceal a man on horseback. 
 
 Beneath the ferns grew a grayish-green moss, 
 as soft as a velvet carpet and ten times as thick. 
 The trail led across a plateau and then de- 
 scended sharply to the White River, a swift, 
 glacier-fed stream drawing its waters from the 
 slopes of Mount Tacoma. A few settlers have 
 established themselves on the upper waters of 
 this river, and made farms on small natural 
 prairies in the shadows of the great forest, 
 where they raise hops and oats. We forded 
 the river, the water coming up above the sad- 
 dle-girths, and the unwilling horses picking 
 their way cautiously over the stones in the 
 rapid, murky current. The afternoon's ride took 
 us through a " big bum." These " burns" are 
 marked features of Cascade Mountain scenery. 
 The name is applied to a strip of plateau or 
 mountain-side where a fire has ravaged the 
 forest, devouring the underbrush, consuming 
 all the dead trees and many of the living ones, 
 and leaving those that have not perished 
 in its devastating progress standing naked 
 and brown. Nature rapidly covers the scene 
 of the ruin with a mantle of ferns, and the 
 " bum " soon looks rather cheerful than other- 
 wise, because it resembles a clearing and af- 
 fords a view of the sky. Two settlers' cabins 
 were passed that afternoon, occupied by farm- 
 ers who had come in last year from Kansas, 
 and had already redeemed a few acres from 
 the forest, and could show flourishing fields of 
 wheat and oats. Towards even- ig the trail be- 
 came more diflftcult. There was not the slight- 
 est danger of losing it, because a horse could 
 not possibly have gone his length into the 
 intricate maze of young cedars and fallen fir 
 trunks on either side ; but progress upon it was 
 an active athletic exercise, involving leaping 
 over or dodging under tree trunks, pushing 
 through barricades of bushes and brambles, 
 mounting and dismounting a dozen times in 
 every mile. The difliculties of the tangled 
 track had not discouraged an enterprising 
 German from taking his wife and three babies 
 over it, and making a home on the border of 
 a " burn " and on the banks of a little lake. 
 We reached his cabin just at nightfall of our 
 first day's journey. He is the most advanced 
 settler towards the Stampede Pass in the Cas- 
 cade Range. The two doors and three win- 
 dows of his house he packed in on the back 
 of a horse, but all the rest of the edifice he 
 had made with his axe out of cedar poles and 
 one fallen cedar-tree, splitting out the siding, 
 the shingles, and the flooring. In like manner 
 he had built a barn, a chicken-house, and a 
 kennel for his big Newfoundland dog, and 
 had fenced in with palings a bit of a door- 
 yard, where his wife had made a few flower- 
 beds in which bachelor's-buttons, poppies, and 
 portulacas flou ished. The man had also 
 
 I 
 
836 
 
 FTiOM PUGET SOUND TO THE UPPER COLUMBIA. 
 
 TYLER CLACIEK, MOUNT TACOMA. ALTITUDE AT FACE, 5800 FEET. 
 
 managed to clear a three-acre field, where he 
 was raising a fine crop of potatoes. All this 
 he had done between May and August — ac- 
 tually creating a home, a field, and a garden 
 in five months' time, with the unaided labor 
 of his own hands. And he was a little fellow 
 too, but he was always jolly, and perhaps 
 that was the secret of his wonderful achieve- 
 ments. All the time he was singing his old 
 Westphalian songs, and his flaxen-haired wife 
 was jolly too ; and any living creatures jollier 
 than those three tow-headed children I never 
 saw. What ditl he get to eat ? Why, he could 
 knock over a dozen pheasants any morning in 
 the nearest thicket, and the lake was full of 
 trout. After a few years it would not be all 
 wilderness about him, he said ; the railroad 
 would come, and by that time he would have 
 eighty acres of good cleared land. Would he 
 not be lonesome in the long wuiter ? Oh, no ! 
 he would have plenty to do "slashing," /. <•., 
 cutting down the trees preparatory to burn- 
 ing them, — the usual process of clearing land 
 where there is no market for the timber. 
 We (;am|)ed very comfortably that night 
 
 on a pile cf hay in the settler's shed -barn, a 
 structure half roofed over, but still wanting 
 sides, and were early on the trail next morn- 
 ing, after a breakfast of ham, bread, and cof- 
 fee. The profuse and luxuriant vegetation 
 continued. A noticeable plant, called the 
 devil's club from the brier-like character of its 
 stem, spread out leaves as large as a Parama 
 hat, and thrust up a spear-like bunch of reel 
 berries. The wild syringa perfumed the air. 
 There were two varieties of the elder — the 
 common one of the East, having black berries, 
 and one growing much higher and bearing 
 large red berries. Thimbleberry bushes grew 
 in dense thickets. The little snowball berr\ 
 cultivated in eastern door-yards was seen, and 
 also whortleberries and blueberries. Among 
 the flowers was a " jileeding-heart," in form 
 like the familiar garden flower, but much 
 smaller, and of a pale purple color. The mosi 
 common bloom was the gay Erigeroncauadoi- 
 sis, or " fire-weed," which occupied every spoi 
 where it could find a few rays of sunlight. 
 About noon of this second day's march we 
 descended bv a steep zigzag |)ath to the soutli 
 
FROM PUGET SOUND TO THE UPPER COLUMBIA. 
 
 837 
 
 s shed-barn, a 
 t still wanting 
 lil next morn- 
 )read, and cof- 
 int vegetation 
 nt, called the 
 character of its 
 e as a Parama 
 i bunch of red 
 fumed the air. 
 he elder — the 
 g black berries, 
 r and bearing 
 ry bushes grew 
 nowball berry 
 swas seen, and 
 Tries. Among 
 leart," in form 
 k-er, init much 
 3lor. The most 
 if^eroncauadfii- 
 )ied ev ery spoi 
 ys of sunlight, 
 ay's march wf 
 th to the soutli 
 
 bank of Green River, a handsome trout-stream, 
 brawling over rocks or resting in quiet dark- 
 green pools. A great field of excellent bitu- 
 minous coal, partly explored, and waiting for 
 a railroad to make it valuable, lies in veins 
 from six to ten feet thick under the forests 
 that border this stream. It is the best coal 
 thus far discovered in Washington Territory. 
 In its vicinity lie beds of rich iron ore. So 
 here, hidden in this tangled wilderness, are 
 the elements of a great industry, which in the 
 future will make these solitudes pc^ ulous. 
 
 The trail turned up the narrow valley of 
 Green River, and thence on for many miles 
 it clambered up steep slopes and plunged 
 down into the lateral ravines formed by the 
 tributary streams — up or d ^wn nearly all the 
 way, with rarely a hundred yards of tolerably 
 level ground. It was a toilsome day for men 
 and animals, but for the riders enlivened with 
 the sense of adventure, and with thoughts 
 now and then of what would happen if a 
 horse should make a false step on the verge 
 of a precipice where the path clung to a 
 mountain wall atthousand feet above the roar- 
 ing river. Travel on a mountain trail is never 
 monotonous. Youi" perceptive faculties are 
 kept on the alert to dodge projecting branches 
 and watch for all the various chances and 
 changes of the track. Then there are ascents 
 
 ; too steep for your horse to carry you, and de 
 
 ; scents too abrupt for safe riding \ streams to 
 ford, quagmires to flounder through, and 
 divers other incidents to enliven the journey. 
 Our second night on the trail was spent at 
 a camp of engineers engaged in locating the 
 line of a railroad over the Cascade Moun- 
 tains to connect eastern Washington with the 
 Puget Sound country. This project of sur- 
 mounting the formidable barrier of the Cas- 
 cades is as old as the time when Governor 
 Isaac I. Stevens conducted a government 
 expedition from St. Paul to Puget Sound, in 
 
 ' 1853, to determine the feasibility of a north- 
 ern route for a railroad to the Pacific. It was 
 
 ; on Stevens's report that there were passes in 
 .he range practicable for a railroad that the 
 original charter of the Northern Pacific Com- 
 pany, granted by Congress in 1862, desig- 
 nated a route from the Upper Columbia to 
 the Sound for the main line of that road. 
 This was amended by Congress in 1870, and 
 the main line was changed so as to run down 
 the Columbia River to Portland, and thence 
 northward to the Sound, getting through the 
 mountains by the only gap opened by nature, 
 ?that of the great gorge of the Columbia. At 
 
 'the same time the short line across the moun- 
 tains was designated as the Cascade Branch. 
 Surveys to find a feasible pass for this branch 
 have been prosecuted with more or less dili- 
 VoL. XXIX.— 86. 
 
 gence and with several long intermissions 
 ever since 1870. During the past three years 
 a great deal of money has been spent upon 
 these surveys. How expensive they have been 
 may be judged from the fact that to run a 
 reconnaissance line through the dense forests, 
 encumbered by prostrate timber, which clothe 
 the western slope of the Cascades, requires 
 the services of ten axemen to open a path 
 along which .the engineers can advance a 
 mile or two a day with their instruments. 
 All this labor and expenditure of money has 
 been crowned with success, however, and a 
 pass has been found up which a railroad can 
 be built, but at the summit a tunnel nearly 
 two miles long must be excavated. It \, ill be 
 the longest tunnel in America with the excep- 
 tion of that through the Hoosac Mountains 
 in Massachusetts. 
 
 The engineers' camp on the bank of the 
 brawling torrent of Green River was so cheer- 
 '^ul a spot, with its white tents and blazing 
 .ires, that, although it was early in the after- 
 noon, saddles and packs were taken off the 
 horses and the decision made to go no far- 
 ther that day. The midsummer air in the 
 mountains was so cool that the warmth of the 
 fires was grateful. So were the hot biscuits 
 and steaming coffee provided by the cook, 
 and the pink-fleshed trout caught in the river. 
 Stories of encounters with cougars and bears 
 were told around the crackling fir logs that 
 evening. The cinnamr^n bear is apt to be an 
 ugly customer, it was agreed, but the black 
 bear is not dangerous unless it be a she-bear 
 with o.ibs. The cougar, or mountain lion, is 
 the most redoubtable beast of these wilds. 
 Perhaps the best way to deal with one of 
 these huge felines is that adopted by an Insh 
 axeman, who thus narrated his adventure : 
 " I was a-coming along the trail with nie 
 blankets on me back, and with niver as much 
 as a stick to defind mesilf, when all at onst 
 I saw a terrible big cougar not two rods 
 ahead of me, twistin' his tail and getting ready 
 fer to jump. I come upon him that suddent 
 that it was hard to tell which was the most 
 surprised, me or the baste. Well, sor, I trim- 
 bled like a man with the ager. But I saw that 
 something had to be done, and dom'd quick 
 too. So I threw down me blankets and gave 
 one hiduous yell. That was onexpected by 
 the cougar. He niver heard such a noise be- 
 fore, and he just turned tail and jumped into 
 the brush. I picked up me blankets and made 
 the best time into camp that was ever made 
 on that trail." 
 
 The civil engineers engaged in the railroad 
 surveys arc educated young men from the 
 East, the younger ones often fresh from col- 
 lege. They spend the greater part of the year 
 
838 
 
 FROM PUGET SOUND TO THE UPPER COLUMBIA. 
 
 immured in the forest, with no communica- 
 tion with the world save that furnished by 
 the pack-train which comes in once a week to 
 bring supplies. A good story was told at the 
 camp fire of one of the engineers who, after 
 he had been eight months in the woods, went 
 back to the settlements. Approaching a house, 
 he saw a woman's calico gown hanging on a 
 line. The sight so affected him that he got off 
 his horse and kissed the hem of the garment. 
 The faded gown was emblematic to the young 
 man's mind of all the graces and refinements 
 of civilization, of woman's tenderness and 
 love, of his far-off Massachusetts home, and the 
 mother, sisters, and sweetheart he had left there. 
 
 The third day of our journey through the 
 forest led up the narrow gorge of Green 
 River, the trail now skirting the river's bank, 
 and now climbing over mountain shoulders 
 thrust out into the stream. The forest, if pos- 
 sible, grew more dense as we advanced. The 
 damp ground, never reached by the sun's 
 rays, was covered with a thick growth of gi- 
 gantic ferns and of the broad-leaved devil's- 
 club. I saw cedar-trees ten feet in diameter 
 above the point where their trunks spread out 
 to take a firm hold upon the ground. There 
 were many queer tree growths. Tall fir sap- 
 lings grew out of prostrate, decaying trunks. 
 From the roots of an enormous dead cedar, 
 whose broken column was still standing, arose 
 four large young trees, each at least one hun- 
 dred and fifty feet high, and standing so close 
 to each other and to the dead parent tree 
 that there was not more than two yards' space 
 between them. Near by a fir and a cedar had 
 grown together for a few yards above the 
 ground, so as to form a common trunk. Fall- 
 en trees and often the trunks and lower limbs 
 of live ones were thickly sheathed in moss — 
 not the trailing tree-moss of the Rocky 
 Mountain forests, but a thick, tufted, carpet-like 
 moss, of the same variety as that growing 
 upon the ground. After a hard day's march 
 we forded the river towards sunset and camped 
 upon the north bank. The fire was soon made, 
 the biscuits were baked in the tin reflector oven, 
 the coffee was boiled, the ham was fried, and 
 the horses were fed with the barley they had 
 carried on their backs. Then the tent-fly was 
 set up with one end against two enormous firs 
 that grew side by side, and luxurious beds were 
 made of moss and hemlock boughs, and we 
 went to sleep, happy in the thought that the 
 next day's march would take us up to the 
 summit of the pass and down on the eastern 
 slope of the mountains. 
 
 Next morning we left the main stream of 
 Green River, already diminished to a narrow 
 torrent, and began to follow up the course of 
 Sunday Creek, the trail clinging to the steep 
 
 slopes of the mountain walls. About noon the 
 actual ascent of the divide began. An hour 
 of hard climbing, crossing from side to side 
 of a narrow ravine, or zigzagging along its 
 wooded walls, the forest thinning out a little 
 as we went up, brought us to a little lake. 
 Just above was a " big burn," where the tim- 
 ber had been swept clean off by fire save a 
 few blackened stumps, and in the middle of 
 this " burn " was Stampede Pass, a narrow 
 notch with a sharp ascent on both sides. Our 
 horses quickened their pace, as if knowing 
 that the long, hard climb was almost over; 
 and after a few seconds' dash over ashes and 
 charcoal we stood on the ridge of the pass. 
 The first glance was naturally on beyond to 
 the eastward. Far down in a deep valley, 
 placid and green, lay I.ake Kichilas. Farther 
 on were mountain ranges, not densely tim- 
 bered like those of the western slopes of the 
 Cascades, but showing bare places, and, where 
 wooded, covered with the Rocky Mountain 
 pine, which grows in an open way, with little 
 underbrush. The reddish trunks of these trees 
 give color to an entire mountain-side. It was 
 to the westward, however, that the view was 
 most striking; for there, towering far above 
 the green ridges of the Cascades, rose the 
 dazzling snow-fields and glaciers of Mount 
 Tacoma. Above them rested a girdle of 
 clouds, and above the clouds, serene in the 
 blue ether, glittered the white summits. The 
 peak seemed much higher than when seen 
 from the sea-level of the Sound. Mountains 
 of great altitude always show to best advan- 
 tage when seen from considerable elevations. 
 We had been climbing all day to reach our 
 point of view, and yet the gigantic peak tow- 
 ered aloft into the sky to a height that seemed 
 incredible, as if it were only the semblance 
 of a mountain formed by the clouds. 
 
 Stampede Pass got its name four years ago, 
 when a party of trail-cutters, camped at the 
 little lake near its summit, not liking the 
 treatment they received from their boss, 
 stampeded in a body and returned to the 
 settlements. Later, the engineers called it 
 Garfield Pass, because there the news of 
 President Garfield's assassination came to 
 them ; but the first name is the one generally 
 used, rhe elevation of the pass is about five 
 thousand feet, or double that of the point 
 where the Pennsylvania Railroad crosses the 
 Alleghany Mountains. The descent eastward 
 to the streams that form the Yakima River is 
 only moderately abrupt, and one can ride 
 down the zigzag trail with no great danger 
 of pitching over his horse's head. The char- 
 acter of the forest growth is very different 
 from that on the western slooes of the moun- 
 tains, the gigantic firs and cedars disappear- 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
)Out noon the 
 m. An hour 
 side to side 
 ing along its 
 ig out a little 
 a little lake, 
 here the tim- 
 )y fire save a 
 he middle of 
 ss, a narrow 
 th sides. Our 
 s if knowing 
 almost over; 
 ver ashes and 
 : of the pass, 
 an beyond to 
 deep valley, 
 lilas. Farther 
 densely tim- 
 slopes of the 
 es, and, where 
 ;ky Mountain 
 'ay, with little 
 of these trees 
 i-side. It was 
 the view was 
 ing far above 
 ides, rose the 
 ers of Mount 
 a girdle of 
 serene in the 
 summits. The 
 in when seen 
 1. Mountains 
 o best advan- 
 ble elevations. 
 yr to reach our 
 itic peak tow- 
 it that seemed 
 he semblance 
 loads. 
 
 four years ago, 
 amped at the 
 lot liking the 
 n their boss, 
 turned to the 
 eers called it 
 the news of 
 tion came to 
 : one generally 
 is is about five 
 ; of the point 
 ad crosses the 
 scent eastward 
 akima River is 
 one can ride 
 ) great danger 
 ad. The char- 
 very difterent 
 s of the moun- 
 lars disappear- 
 
 FROM PUGET SOUND TO THE UPPER COLUMBIA. 
 
 839 
 
 ing as soon as the summit is crossed, and in 
 their places appearing a species of small 
 mountain fir, growing thickly, but with little 
 underbrush and no intricate barricades of 
 fallen trunks. The flowers are of new species, 
 and the pine-grass grows in the woods. Evi- 
 dently the climatic conditions are widely dis- 
 similar to those on the western side of the 
 great range,' the moisture-laden atmosphere 
 of the Puget Sound country, which produces 
 a phenomenal vegetable growth, not crossing 
 ihe mountain-wall. Probably there is no- 
 where on ihe globe as marked a climatic 
 boundary as that of the Cascade Mountains 
 in both Washington Territory and Oregon. 
 West of this boundary the winters are mild, 
 with much rain and little snow, and the sum- 
 mers cool and showery ; while east of it the 
 winters are sharp and dry, with abundant 
 snowfall, and the summers very hot, little rain 
 falling between the first of June and the first 
 of October. On Puget Sound you have the 
 climate of Ireland, while just across the moun- 
 tains in the valley of the Yakima weather and 
 landscapes in summer recall northern Cali- 
 fornia. 
 
 Our fourth day's march was the longest 
 on the trail. We made twenty-five miles, 
 and came at sunset to a wagon-road and a 
 fenced field, evidences of settlement that were 
 greeted with enthusiasm. There was a house, 
 too, tenanted by the most advanced settler 
 mountainwards in the Yakima Valley. He 
 kept a toll-gate, and levied a tax on emigrants 
 about to struggle over the Snoqualmie Pass to 
 the Sound country. Nominally there is a 
 wagon-road through this pass all the way to 
 Seattle, and stout wagons lightly loaded are 
 somehow gotten across the mountains by 
 courageous emigrants who carve their way 
 with their axes through the fallen timber. 
 The chief utility of the road, however, is for 
 the driving of catde. All the Sound country, 
 and much of British Columbia, get their beef 
 supply from the bunch-grass plains east of the 
 Cascades. It takes seven days to drive a herd 
 of cattle from the Upper Yakima to Seattle, 
 which is the beef market of the Sound. The 
 night was spent in a deserted cabin on beds 
 of boughs eked out with a little hay which 
 the last occupant had left. Breakfast on the 
 grass next morning was enlivened by a visit 
 from a flock of Hudson's Bay birds that at- 
 tempted to share the meal, and, after carrying 
 off several crackers, made an attack on the 
 remains of a ham. These familiar brown 
 birds, sometimes called lumberman's friends 
 or whisky-jacks, discern the smoke of a camp- 
 fire miles away, and are speedily on hand to 
 clear up the crumbs. 
 
 Our horseback journey was now at end. A 
 
 good friend in Portland had sent a team and 
 spring wagon a hundred and fifty miles from 
 the Lower Yakima to meet us at the end of 
 the wagon-road. Our excellent Scotch guide, 
 with the cook, the packer, the saddle-horses, 
 and the pack-animals, turned back to retrace 
 their steps over the long trail to the Puyallup 
 Valley. Blankets and bags were transferred to 
 the wagon, and ',»'e set off through the open 
 pine woods, over a very fair road, down the 
 valley of the Yakima. The road did not follow 
 the strearn closely, but only kept its general 
 course, taking across the hills to avoid the 
 canons and muddy bottoms. Only one house 
 was seen in the forenoon's drive. It was in- 
 habited by three C ermans, who had " taken 
 up" a natural timotbv meadow, and were 
 getting rich cutting a ^lundred tons of hay 
 every year, and selling it to herders on their 
 way to the Sound at twenty-five dollars a ton. 
 They had an irrigated garden full of all sorts 
 of vegetables. About noon another farm was 
 reached, where a Maine man was raising fine 
 crops of oats and wheat by irrigation. A big 
 barn filled with hay and a comfortable log- 
 house flanked by apple-trees were invitations 
 to rest not to be refused in a wild country. 
 The housekeeper prepared a surprisingly good 
 dinner — the first civilized meal the travelers 
 had eaten since leaving the hotel at Tacoma. 
 There were fresh vegetables and roast beef, 
 coffee and cream that defied criticism, and an 
 apple-pie that could not be surpassed in New. 
 England. We sat upon benches, and in the 
 parlor the only furniture was three wooden 
 chairs and a rude table ; but there were chintz 
 curtains at the windows, hanging from cornices 
 made of moss, and on the table were many 
 newspapers and a copy of The Century. 
 
 The next house on the road belonged to 
 Indian John, a famous character among the 
 whites of the Upper Yakima country, and a 
 sockalee tyec, or big chief, among the Kittitas 
 Indians. John has a few well-fenced fields 
 of grain, and a good log-cabin, window- 
 less and with a hole in the roof to let out the 
 smoke from the fire burning on the ground in 
 the middle of the one room. The women of 
 his household were busy drying service-berries, 
 but when our driver told them in Chinook 
 that we were going to take a photograph of 
 the place, the younger ones hurried into the 
 cabin and speedily put on what finery they 
 possessed in the shape of blue gowns, brass 
 bracelets, and girdles of bead-work studded 
 with brass nails. John wore civilized clothes, 
 but a young Indian, presumably the husband 
 of the squaw with the baby, was attired in 
 scarlet leggins, green breech-cloth, and blue 
 tunic, and his face was liberally adorned with 
 vermilion paint. John is a thrifty fellow, and 
 
840 
 
 FBOM PUGET SOUND TO THE UPPER COLUMBIA. 
 
 when his relations come to visit him and live 
 upon him Indian fashion, he sets them to 
 work building fences or hoeing potatoes. He 
 wants to marry his youngest daughter to a 
 white man. He says the siwashes (Indians) 
 are cultus, which in Chinook means " no 
 good." The girl might be thought rather too 
 buxom to suit a critical taste, and objections 
 might also be made to her mouth and feet on 
 the score of their size ; but as to her good- 
 nature there could be no doubt after she had 
 smiled all over her face at each of the travelers 
 and merrily winked her black eyes. 
 
 A few miles beyond Indian John's ranch 
 the forest stops abruptly on the crest of a hill, 
 and the bunch-grass plains begin. They are 
 not plains in the sense of being at all level. 
 On the contrary, they are heaved up in hills 
 and ridges and low bare mountain ranges, and 
 creased by many valleys and canons ; but they 
 are destitute of timber, save along the streams, 
 and are sere, yellow, and dusty, and thus con- 
 form to the Far- Western meaning of the word 
 plains. The soil is composed of disintegrated 
 basaltic rock, and, whether on lofty crests or 
 steep slopes or in deep ravines, is alike cov- 
 ered with the same monotonous vegetation of 
 bunch-grass, wild sunflowers, sage-brush, and 
 grease- wood. The colors of the landscapes 
 are dirty browns and yellows and faded sage- 
 green, save where a belt of alders and wil- 
 lows skirts a creek. In May and June, when 
 .the grass is fresh and the sunflowers are in 
 bloom, the country seems carpeted with fresh 
 green and gold ; but this season of verdure and 
 blossoms only lasts a few weeks, and then 
 comes the long, dry, dusty summer. The 
 plains of the great Columbia basin occupy a 
 stretch of country of almost circular form, and 
 of about three hundred miles across, sur- 
 rounded by the Cascade Mountains on the 
 west, the Blue Mountains on the south, the 
 Bitter Root and Coeur d'Alfene Mountains 
 on the east, and the Peshastin, Colville, and 
 other ranges on the north. From north to 
 south, nearly midway of the basin's width, 
 flows the Columbia. The eastern part of the 
 basin is mainly drained by the Snake, the 
 Palouse, and the Spokane rivers, and the 
 western part by the Yakima and its tributaries. 
 
 In the afternoon of the first day's travel by 
 wagon, and the fifth of our journey from Puget 
 Sound, we entered the Kittitas Valley, and saw 
 its market-town of Ellensburg lying in white 
 spots against, a brown hill-side fifteen miles 
 distant. This valley is the most exten.sive 
 and most thickly settled between the Cas- 
 cade Mountains and the Columbia. It is 
 twenty miles long and from three to ten miles 
 
 wide, and, being well watered and easy to irri- 
 gate, has attracted a thrifty farming popula- 
 tion. With a few small tributary valleys, it is 
 said to contain two thousand five hundred 
 people, of whom some four hundrec'. live in the 
 town. Forty bushe's of wheat to tie acre and 
 four hundred of potatoes are average yields on 
 the rich irrigated lands. In spite of their iso- 
 lation from markets, — the valley is one hun- 
 dred and fifty miles from the nearest accessi- 
 ble transportation line, — the farmers appear 
 prosperous, their houses and barns being of a 
 better character than are usually seen in new 
 countries. Settlement in the valley dates back 
 ten years ; but most of the people have come 
 in during the past four or five years, attracted 
 by the prospect of a railroad as well as by the 
 fertility of the soil.* 
 
 Of Ellensburg little need be said. It is a 
 creditable frontier \illage for one so new and 
 so remote, supporting two weekly newspapers 
 and an academy. Tiie Yakima River flows 
 by the town in a swift, deep current, fed by 
 snows but not by glcciers, as its clear, blue 
 waters testify. Froui a high ridge south of the 
 town the top of Mount Tacoma can be seen, 
 but it is much less impressive from this point 
 of view than is Mount Stuart, the highest 
 peak of the Peshastin Range, which bounds 
 the prospect on the north. I confess never to 
 have heard the name of this range before, yet 
 it is immeasurably grander than the White 
 Mountains or the Adirondacks. Mount Stuart, 
 usually called Monument Peak, is ten thou- 
 sand feet high, and is as bold and peculiar in 
 its form as the Matterhorn in Switzerland. 
 The whole range is savage and precipitous, 
 a serrated ridge of brown rock, with many 
 jagged peaks, too steep to carry much snow 
 save in the deep ravines. At the foot of these 
 magnificent mountains lie four deep, green, 
 forest - rimmed lakes — Kichilas, Kachees, 
 Kitallum, and Cleellum. The region is wild 
 and little known, and is very inviting to ad- 
 venturous explorers. Veins of copper carry- 
 ing considerable gold and silver have recently 
 been discovered there, and a vein of coal so 
 good for blacksmithing purpo;>es that it is 
 hauled down to the Kittitas Valley and sold 
 for thirty dollars a ton. 
 
 Going southward from Ellensburg, there is 
 no settlement after leaving the Kittitas Valley 
 until the Wenass Valley is reached, a distance 
 of twenty miles. The Yakima plunges into a 
 deep canon with sides so steep that there is 
 no room for a road. So the road climbs over 
 two bare, brown ridges, one high enough to 
 figure on the maps as a mountain range. 
 From its crest the squares of green and gold 
 
 * The journey described in this article was made in the summer of 1884. 
 up the Yaitima Valley has advanced as far as Yakima City. — E. V. S. 
 
 Since then the railroad-building 
 
 ■It. 
 
l. 
 
 d easy to irri- 
 ning popula- 
 valleys, it is 
 five hundred 
 rer. live in the 
 t le acre and 
 age yields on 
 ; of their iso- 
 r is one hun- 
 arest accessi- 
 rmers appear 
 ns being of a ' 
 Y seen in new 
 ey dates back 
 lie have come 
 ears, attracted 
 well as by the 
 
 said. It is a 
 le so new and 
 ly newspapers 
 I River flows 
 urrent, fed by 
 its clear, blue 
 re south of the 
 1 can be seen, 
 rem this point 
 :, the highest 
 which bounds 
 )nfess never to 
 ige before, yet 
 an the White 
 
 Mount Scuart, 
 k, is ten thou- 
 md peculiar in 
 n Switzerland, 
 id precipitous, 
 ;k, with many 
 Ty much snow 
 le foot of these 
 r deep, green, 
 las, Kachees, 
 
 region is wild 
 inviting to ad- 
 " copper carry- 
 :r have recently 
 vein of coal so 
 OSes that it is 
 '^alley and sold 
 
 nsburg, there is 
 Kittitas Valley 
 :hed, a distance 
 , plunges into a 
 :p that there is 
 jad climbs over 
 high enough to 
 lountain range, 
 green and gold 
 
 > railroad-building 
 
 F/IOM PUGET SOUND TO THE UPPER COLUMBIA. 
 
 841 
 
 I 
 
 ^ 
 
 formed by the fields of oats and ripened 
 wheat in the Kittitas Valley made a very 
 pretty landscape effect. The-ridges separating 
 the narrow valleys are covered with an abun- 
 dant growth of bunch-grass, and are good 
 summer ranges for stock ; but the snow lies 
 on them too deeply in winter for cattle to 
 range, as in Montana, all the year round; 
 consequently there is but little stock in the 
 country. The Wenass is a tributary of the 
 Yakima, and it makes a good agricultural 
 valley, twenty miles long, but only one or two 
 farms wide. About three hundred people in- 
 habit it. Ten miles farther south come the 
 Nachess Valley, wider, but not so long as the 
 Wenass, and the Coweechee Valley, narrower 
 and longer than the Nachess. Both are well 
 settled. On a farm at the mouth of this val- 
 ley, where we halted for supper, apples, 
 plums, cherries, raspberri , ij i blackberries 
 grew luxuriantly, and in an irrigated garden 
 all sorts of vegetal I ; : flourished. The Nachess 
 debouches into the Yakima Valley, a name 
 applied locally to only about fifteen miles of 
 the course of the Yakima River, where there 
 is an irrigable plain eight oi' ten miles wide, 
 partly under cultivation, and supporting the 
 town of Yakima City, with its eight hundred 
 inhabitants. We reached the " city " about 
 dark, having traversed forty miles of good 
 road without meeting a single person trav- 
 eling in the opposite direction. Save a few 
 herds of cattle and bands of horses and nu- 
 merous flocks of grouse, there was no life on 
 the grassy slopes and ridges. Yakima City 
 stands at the junction of the Attanam Creek 
 with the Yakima River, and on the east side 
 of the river there is a third inhabited valley, 
 called the Moxee. In all these valleys farm- 
 ing by irrigation is very successful. The soil 
 is a fine powder, carrying no trace of sand ; 
 the whole region was once volcanic and 
 later the bed of a lake. A little water applied 
 to this rich soil, with the aid of the heat of 
 the long summer days, causes all the cereals 
 and vegetables of the temperate zone, and all 
 the fruits, save peaches, to flourish amazingly. 
 One acre will produce as much as three of 
 good farm-land in the Eastern States. The 
 town is a medley of cheap wooden buildings 
 and vegetable gardens, shaded by Lombardy 
 poplars, and backed up against a ridge of 
 bulging brown hills. In summer the mercury 
 frequently goes up to one hundred degrees ; 
 but the climate is remarkably healthy, owing, 
 no doubt, to the dryness of rhe air and soil. 
 The inhabi^^unts think the place beautiful, and 
 so it is when contrasted with the hot, weari- 
 some expanses of sage-brush and bunch-grass 
 and powdery dust one must traverse to reach 
 it. Little streams of clear water run along the 
 
 sides of the streets and are sluiced off" into the 
 gardens. The town is the trade center of all 
 the region between the Cascades and the 
 Columbia, and is waiting impatiently for the 
 railroad advancing up the Yakima to aug- 
 ment its business and population. At present 
 the merchants 'haul their goods from the Dalles, 
 about a hundred miles distant, and thither go 
 such products of the country as can profitably 
 be transported so far in wagons. When the 
 railroad goes through the mountains, all these 
 fertile little irrigated valleys, drained by the 
 Yakima, will get rich raising fruits, vegeta- 
 bles, grain, and cattle for tlic 'ound cities, 
 which now get their supplies ala>nst entirely 
 from San Francisco. Uitch enttrprises on a 
 large scale will then recli'm thousands of 
 acres that now grow notb ' ■■ but sage-brush. 
 
 I heard a good deal ot talk in Vakiikt City 
 of a project on the part of the railroad com- 
 pany to create a new town r> ..r the junction 
 of the Nachess and Yakima rivers, with the 
 view of making it a model place of wide 
 streets, deep lots, shade-trees, flowers, and 
 running streams, by the aid ot the abun- 
 dant waters of the Nachess, available for ir- 
 rigation. The future city, which as yet hardly 
 exists on paper, is already in imagination 
 the flourishing capital of the great State of 
 Washington. Its proposed site is now .-. waste 
 of dust and sage-brush, but, with plenty of 
 water and plenty of money, the project of 
 making this desert blossom like the rose 
 would be perfectly feasible. 
 
 Leaving Yakima City and traveling in a 
 south-easterly direction, our road ran for about 
 fifty miles through an Indian reservation be- 
 longing to a number of tribes gathered from 
 the entire region between the Cascade Moun- 
 tains and the Upper Columbia — Yakimas, 
 Klickitats, Kittitas, and others whose names 
 are only known locally. About three thou- 
 sand souls belong upon this reservation, but 
 there are probably not more than half that 
 number actually living on it, the others pre- 
 ferring their old homes in the mountains, 
 where they can hunt, or on the banks of the 
 Columbia, wh "e the salmon furnish an abun- 
 dant food supply. Those upon the reservation 
 are pardy civhized, culti-ating small field;; 
 of grain and herding cattle. Nominally they 
 have all been Christianized, and Methodists 
 and Catholics compete for the honor of sav- 
 ing their souls ; but a considerable number 
 render secret homage to an old humpbacked 
 Indian prophet, named Smohallo, who has in- 
 vented a religion of his own. This dusky Ma- 
 homet lives in the desert, near Priests' Rapids, 
 on the Columbia, where he has a village of 
 adhe'^ents, and is constantly visited by admir- 
 ers from tl. i reservation, who bring him tribute. 
 
842 
 
 ■ % 
 
 \ 
 
 FROM PUGET SOUND TO THE UPPER COLUMB/A. 
 
 He goes into trances and professes to have 
 communion with the Great Spirit. An army 
 officer, who recently visited Smohallo's village 
 to see if the old fellow was brewing any mis- 
 chief, told me that he witnessed a singular relig- 
 ious ceremony in a tent. The prophet sat on 
 a hassock, with a bell in his hand. In front of 
 him were twelve Indians in red shirts, on one 
 side six maidens in white gowns, and on the 
 other six in red gowns. The ringing of the 
 bell was a signal for them to kneel or rise. 
 The service consisted of chants and a dis- 
 course by the prophet. At one time he fell on 
 the ground in a trance, and after a few min- 
 utes arose and announced a pretended revela- 
 tion from the heavenly powers. Smohallo was 
 educated by the Jesuit fathers at the Coeur 
 d'Al^ne Mission, and evidently has borrowed 
 his ceremonials from those he saw there. He 
 is a disturbing element among the Indians, be- 
 cause he tries to dissuade them from industry, 
 saying that the earth is their mother, and that to 
 plow the ground is to scratch her skin, to dig 
 ditches is to wound her breast, and to open mines 
 is to crack her bones, and that she will not receive 
 them after they die if they thus abuse her. 
 
 The Yakima Reservation lies between the 
 river and the Simcoe Mountains. Most of it 
 is sage-brush land, but for three hours we 
 drove through a green country covered with 
 rye-grass standing higher than our horses' 
 heads, with rich pasturage of smaller herbage 
 among it. Opposite, on the white man's side 
 of the valley, there is little or no selUement, 
 but the land lies favorably for reclamation by 
 ditches taken from the river. Some of the 
 Ind ans live in frame houses evidently built by 
 the Government, for they are of one pattern ; 
 others have b'lilt log structures for themselves, 
 while many still adhere to the " wicky-up " — 
 a shapeless hut made from a combination of 
 brush and mats woven from reeds. They 
 have adopted white customs in one respect, at 
 least, for they have set up a toll-gate and tax 
 travelers fifty cents for driving across their 
 country. The toll-gate keeper was in a morose 
 frame of mind. He had recently been arrested 
 by the agent, put in the " skookum-house " 
 (jail), and fined sixty dollars for having two 
 wives. He said he could not sei what the harm 
 was as long as the women were both satisfied, 
 and grumbled about the loss of the money he 
 had saved to buy a now horse-rake. 
 
 Our noonday halt was at a ranch on the 
 north side of the river. The ranchman ferried 
 the team across on a flatboat, and invited us 
 to rest in rocking-chairs u.i a piazza roofed 
 with green cottonwood boughs while his wife 
 got dinner. He had taken up a green spot in 
 the sage-brush waste, and was making butler 
 
 from fifty cows, and putting up great stack^ 
 of hay for their winter feed. He was a shrewa 
 and prosperous man, and his success had al-j 
 ready attracted other settlers. The afternoon's 
 journey was through a country wholly deso-j 
 late. The river itself seemed to get discouraged,! 
 and ran with a sluggish current through the 
 parched and thirsty land, which constantly 
 robbed it of its waters, so that its volume di-1 
 minished as it advanced. Hidden by the bare 
 hills that bounded the southern horizon layj 
 however, a grassy valley, called Horse Heaven J 
 where fifty families have settled during the 
 past year. Northward the landscape was al^ 
 a burning-hot, dusty sage-brush plain slopinp 
 up to the Rattlesnake Mountains. The nigh^ 
 was spent restfuUy on clean blankets in ar 
 engineers' camp, on the line of the advancing 
 railroad. A mile away was a settlement started 
 by an ex-Congressman from Tennessee, whc 
 hopes that ditch enterprises and the water^ 
 power of the falls of the Yakima will develop 
 a town on his lands. 
 
 The next day — the tenth since we left! 
 Puget Sound — was the most trying of the 
 whole journey. The heat was intolerable.1 
 Probably it would have been about 105° Fah-T 
 renheit in the shade if there hac been anj 
 shade. What it was in the sun nobody at-| 
 tempted to estimate. The dust covered thfl 
 faces of the travelers with yellow masks anr 
 penetrated their clothing, forming a thick de-| 
 posit all over their bodies. Eighteen miles ir 
 a wagon brought us to the end of the rail-l 
 way track buiit last year, but not yet operated] 
 and not put in order since the winter rains, sc 
 that a locomotive could not get over it. Here 
 we transferred ourselves to a hand-car. The 
 three passengers sat in front, with their feetj 
 hanging down over the ties and knocking 
 against the weeds and sand-heaps. Four stoujj 
 fellows at the levers got an average speed 0^ 
 nearly ten miles an hour out of the little ma-j 
 chine. To the heat of the direct rays of the 
 sun was added that reflected from the rails, the 
 sandy embankment, and the sides of the cutsJ 
 With what joy we descried in the early after-j 
 noon the broad, blue flood of the Columbia 1 
 Whai a satisfaction it was to rest in the shade 
 of a tent by the margin of the cool waters I 
 In the evening a diminutive steamboat, ap.. 
 called T/ir A'tiif, ferried us down to Ainsworth| 
 a little town at the confluence of the Snake 
 and the Columbia, — rivers as mighty in \o\{ 
 ume here as the Mississippi and Missouri 
 where they join, and as strikmgly difterent ir 
 the character of their waters. At Ainswortl 
 the journey described in this article endedj 
 and the homeward trip in a Pullman car 
 began. 
 
 Eugent V. Smal/ey.